Former Hershey CEO Rick Lenny has been named chairman of the board at Chicago's Information Resouces Inc., a research and consulting firm for the retail and healthcare industries. Before Hershey, Lenny led the Nabisco Biscuit Co. He also currently serves on the boards of McDonald's Corp., Discover Financial Services and ConAgra Foods. “Rick brings to IRI an impressive background, including more than three decades of experience in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) arena, and we are...

Iris Mobile, a five-year-old mobile marketing technology firm founded by former Motorola employees, has raised $3 million in venture capital from local investors led by Origin Ventures. The company's three co-founders all previously worked at Motorola. Cezar Kolodziej, who serves as Iris Mobile's chief executive, was the chief architect of Motorola's messaging business. Iris Mobile's technology allows brands to embed “rich content” such as videos and image-heavy coupons...

Chicago-based Information Resources Inc. charged rival A.C. Nielsen Co. with antitrust violations in the field of tracking sales of retail packaged goods in a suit filed in U.S. District Court in New York. The suit, which also names Nielsen owner Dun & Bradstreet Corp. and its IMS International unit, seeks a halt to what IRI called anticompetitive conduct and asks damages of more than $350 million. The suit alleges monopolistic behavior.

Former Hershey CEO Rick Lenny has been named chairman of the board at Chicago's Information Resouces Inc., a research and consulting firm for the retail and healthcare industries. Before Hershey, Lenny led the Nabisco Biscuit Co. He also currently serves on the boards of McDonald's Corp., Discover Financial Services and ConAgra Foods. “Rick brings to IRI an impressive background, including more than three decades of experience in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) arena, and we are...

An armistice was declared in the European battle over the checkout counter Tuesday when ACNielsen Corp. announced it has agreed to halt contract practices that the European Commission charged were anti-competitive. ACNielsen, the market leader in the retail tracking service business, said it resolved its dispute with the EC without having to pay a fine. "We are delighted to put this matter behind us," said ACNielsen's chairman and chief executive officer, Nicholas L. Trivisonno.

Iris Grossman has joined Paradigm as an agent in its talent department. Grossman had been with ICM for more than 20 years, though her tenure was broken up by a stint in the 1990s as a casting exec at TNT. She's also president emeritus of Women in Film and chair of the org's Crystal + Lucy Awards. At Paradigm, she'll work with talent department chief Andrew Ruf. Grossman has repped a slew of TV stars over the course of her career, including Jon Hamm, Mandy Patinkin and Ed O'Neill.

With its stock price at all-time lows after losing some big clients, Chicago-based market researcher Information Resources Inc. is under siege. The latest sign of trouble came Friday when one of IRI's largest shareholders called on Chief Executive Joseph P. Durrett to resign or sell the firm. The demand comes two months after IRI's largest customer, Procter & Gamble Co., said it would not renew an estimated $25 million contract for retail-scanner data that expires at the end of June.

SymphonyIRI Group Inc. is returning to its founding name of Information Resources Inc. and rebranding as IRI. Andrew Appel, president and chief executive of the marketing and shopper research firm, announced the change Tuesday at the company's 2013 Summit conference in Las Vegas. "IRI has a rich heritage of innovation and going beyond the data, leveraging advanced analytics and enabling technologies to help our clients excel and win," Appel said in a statement.

The war between Nielsen Marketing Research North America and Information Resources Inc. took a significant turn in Nielsen's favor Tuesday when the Northbrook-based company signed a multiyear partnership with Johnson & Johnson to provide marketing research for its entire consumer sector. In signing the pact with Johnson & Johnson, Nielsen regains two clients it lost to Chicago-based IRI in 1991-McNeil Consumer Products and J&J/Merck, both units of Johnson & Johnson. Last month...

Music does not come easy to Iris DeMent. That much was apparent before she even began the earlier of two sets at the City Winery Saturday night. Her latest release "Sing the Delta" arrived eight years after "Lifeline," a collection of mostly traditional religious songs, and 16 years after "The Way I Should," her last album of original material. That's longer than many careers, and it testifies to DeMent's talents and reputation that so many were willing to wait so long, with only...

In what A.C. Nielsen executives are calling the largest and most significant acquisition the company has made, the Northbrook-based marketing-research giant said Tuesday that it agreed to acquire Asia's biggest supplier of consumer market intelligence. While the exact value of the acquisition of Hong Kong-based Survey Research Group, or SRG, wasn't disclosed, a source within Dun & Bradstreet, Nielsen's parent, said the deal would be a cash transaction "in the neighborhood...

Iris DeMent's much-celebrated 2012 release, “Sing the Delta” (Flariella), marked the singer's first album of new material in 16 years. But it was an album of old-timey gospel songs she essentially released for herself in 2004, “Lifeline,” that made “Sing the Delta” possible. “I wasn't writing, but that record, honest to God, my heart was sunk in that record all the way,” DeMent says. “I felt so aligned in my spirit with those songs. I...

Perhaps it's only logical that two Chicago-area corporate enemies, after spending a decade punching and poking each other in the eye, eventually would take their fight into the more civil confines of a courtroom. So it is that the top two players in the multibillion-dollar global marketing research business--venerable Nielsen Marketing Research North America and scrappy Information Resources Inc.--are heading to federal court following last week's $1 billion civil damage lawsuit filed by IRI. ...

When Iris Levenberg found herself divorced and living in South Florida in her 50s, the executive head hunter-turned-life coach was determined to find a life partner. "I was on a mission," recalls Iris, now 61. "I spent years as a head hunter, and that's how I look at life: You're constantly searching for talent. I knew what I was looking for. So I went online and put myself out there. You can't expect things to land in your lap. " Meanwhile, Dennis Bailen was licking his wounds in...

Joseph Battoe, Mark Degner, Larry Burns and Tom Falduto are successful Chicago-area entrepreneurs who also have this in common: All are alumni of Information Resources Inc. IRI, a Chicago company that for 25 years has challenged ACNielsen for supremacy in the consumer market research arena, has encountered tough times in this decade, but during the 1990s it was an incubator for fresh ideas and the kind of people who could generate them. Battoe, once a division president at IRI, is now the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After Russia recently ousted the U.S. government's aid agency from Moscow, some American pro-democracy groups are feeling pressured to leave, reducing Russian exposure to programs long viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin. The International Republican Institute said the Russian government told it to leave Russia, while the National Democratic Institute said it has moved some of its staff from Russia to Lithuania while it considers its options. Both...

Pressing complaint: VideOcart Inc. said Friday that it has initiated arbitration proceedings against Information Resources Inc. for an injunction to enjoin performance of a joint venture between IRI and Catalina Marketing Inc. Chicago-based VideOcart said that the joint venture violates a non-competition clause in a 1991 agreement between VideOcart and IRI, its former parent.

3.5 stars (out of 4) Iris DeMent made a dramatic impression in the '90s with two stark albums that blended hard-core country and gospel, sparse string-band arrangements and a pristine voice. “Infamous Angel” (1992) and “My Life” (1994) brimmed with timeless meditations on family, spirituality and death. She released a third, more fully arranged album in 1996 (“The Way I Should”), then essentially stopped recording original material. She appeared on a duets album with...

Information Resources Inc., which thrived on its reputation as a young and aggressive player in the marketing research business, has spent the last few weeks rallying its troops and calming investors in the wake of a 40 percent decline in its stock value. What caused the 15-year-old Chicago company's stock to fall from an all-time high of $44.75 a share last September to $26.87 at Friday's close has more to do with the changing nature of the U.S. market than with the...